Westinghouse troubles loom over SC, Georgia nuke projects

Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S. nuclear unit of Japan's Toshiba Corp., filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, calling into question the future of a number of billion-dollar nuclear projects under construction, including two in the U.S.

Nuclear power is cleaner than generating electricity with coal or natural gas, but building a nuclear reactor is much more complex and prohibitively costly.

[...] some older nuclear plants are being shuttered and the four nuclear reactors Westinghouse is helping to build in South Carolina and Georgia are behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Oglethorpe Power, one of the partners in the project, said in a regulatory filing this week that "the revised in-service dates of December 2019 and September 2020" for the two reactors it's building "do not appear to be achievable."

Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co. and holder of a 46-percent stake in the Vogtle project, said in a statement that it "will continue to take every action available to us to hold Westinghouse and Toshiba accountable for their financial responsibilities."

Toshiba has sold off so many parts of its once prized operations, such as computer chips and household appliances, it has little left but its infrastructure business.